POETRY PACIFIC
 |
| Autumn Grove: coloured papercutting by Li Baofeng |
Monday, 11 November 2019
Editor's Notes
dear All PP Patrons,
seven years ago, we started Poetry Pacific whimsically on the remembrance day. so, let us begin by saying:
Happy Anniversary to our PP!
Happy Remembrance Day to all PP patrons!
(& allow us to 'smuggle' a PP's family celebration - Happy Birthday to Kate Emily!)
while highly satisfied with the way PP has been functioning as a project of love of labour, and has survived without any form of financial support since the very start, we feel deeply sorry that mainly due to personal/health concerns, we have to decide to change Poetry Pacific from a biannual to an annual publication, beginning from the year of 2020; that is, on may 5 every year until further notice we will release an yearly edition of the 'best' poetry we can find throughout the year. we believe this arrangement is much better for the continuation of our e.zine than putting it on hiatus from time to time as many other literary outlets do.
in this issue, we are honoured to present 56 poets and 4 artists. we believe this last autumn issue happens to be PP's strongest issue we have ever had!
enjoy reading/viewing!
love in poetry,
eds. at PP
seven years ago, we started Poetry Pacific whimsically on the remembrance day. so, let us begin by saying:
Happy Anniversary to our PP!
Happy Remembrance Day to all PP patrons!
(& allow us to 'smuggle' a PP's family celebration - Happy Birthday to Kate Emily!)
while highly satisfied with the way PP has been functioning as a project of love of labour, and has survived without any form of financial support since the very start, we feel deeply sorry that mainly due to personal/health concerns, we have to decide to change Poetry Pacific from a biannual to an annual publication, beginning from the year of 2020; that is, on may 5 every year until further notice we will release an yearly edition of the 'best' poetry we can find throughout the year. we believe this arrangement is much better for the continuation of our e.zine than putting it on hiatus from time to time as many other literary outlets do.
in this issue, we are honoured to present 56 poets and 4 artists. we believe this last autumn issue happens to be PP's strongest issue we have ever had!
enjoy reading/viewing!
love in poetry,
eds. at PP
PP(8.2): Call for Submissions
WARRANTY & AGREEMENT
By submitting to PP, the submitter warrants that
s/he alone has created the work s/he is submitting and that
s/he owns all rights to it. The submitter will indemnify and
hold PP and its staff harmless from and against any and all loss,
damage, costs and other expenses arising out of claims,
whatever their nature, resulting directly or indirectly
from breach of this warranty. At the same time,
the submitter/contributor agrees that PP can use
part or all of his/her accepted material, including responses
to PP's interview questions, on its Facebook and/or
other similar social networking vehicles for promotional purposes.
* All poetic and photographic works are carefully read/viewed
year round on a rolling basis for PP's annual edition
to be released on 5 May every year;
* Multiple and simultaneous submissions, as well as previously published work,
are all equally welcome insofar as you still hold the copy/publishing rights;
* We wish to pay our poets or buy certain rights from them,
but there is no money exchange involved,
except a genuine shared love for art and wisdom;
* Please send up to 5 of your best shorter poems each time
by pasting them all together with a brief 3rd person bio note
within the body of your email
within the body of your email
to editors.pp@gmail.com,
or 10 visual artworks as individually separate attachments.
Before acceptance, we will NOT open any attachments/files
for virus/spam-related concerns, but we may ask you
to send the accepted work as an attachment;
* Please feel welcome to send us a query if, for instance,
your accepted work does not appear as scheduled;
or other networking vehicles for promotional purposes;
* Our response-time is 4 months from now on:
since we never give anyone any 'rejection notice,' please feel free
to do whatever you want to with your submission
if you do not get any response/acceptance from PP within 4 months
after you send it over to us. In other words:
only those accepted will get a reply.
Once accepted by PP, please allow at least one year
before submitting new work to us
- Many thanks for your kind support of PP & Gooooodluuuuck!
Once accepted by PP, please allow at least one year
before submitting new work to us
- Many thanks for your kind support of PP & Gooooodluuuuck!
********
book/chapbook manuscript submissions
are closed until further notice
are closed until further notice
8 Papercuttings by Li Baofeng
Bionote
Li Baofeng is a contemporary Chinese folk artist who invented 'coloured papercutting' on the basis of traditional papercutting.
1 Poem by Angela Porter
Woven Leaves
Fluttering leaves,
Wind spin weaves them
Into earth brown.
Bionote
Fluttering leaves,
Wind spin weaves them
Into earth brown.
Bionote
Angela Porter has poetry published with Indigo Dreams Publishing since September 2004 (then Bluechrome publishers). Her works can be found in all three of their poetry magazines, and there is a booklet of her poems. She enjoys the work of the Chinese poet Wang Wei (6th Century) and of the host Changming Yuan, and Sappho. Her poetry is strong in voice, which is a collective of speech rhythm, metronomic pulse, phrasing, word elasticity, tone, emphasis and meaning, rather than "dropped in" words. The Than Bauk is a lovely medium in which to explore dimension.
2 Poems by Grace Cavalieri
Of Our Own Making
To be at peace, we’re told there is no other world
outside ourselves,
to water the seed every day.
Let us think of Yeats,
“Things reveal themselves passing away,”
of Eliot, “A sudden piercing joy.”
We’ve learned to hold suffering like
the wind, the weather, the sound of the rain,
yet as I sit
writing with a borrowed pen
fireflies vanish in the sky,
and under the slivered moon
we begin to lose our loneliness
but should this pass away
into time’s web
we’ll touch with a hand of tenderness again,
remembering the poet who wrote
“Do what you can with this.”
BLUEBIRDS
In the small grey hut of self-doubt where the ceilings are too low for you to stand,
by the road where your friend would only drive you half-way home,
next to the trench of holes filled with grief and wrong choices,
where it’s better not to know how you should do things a different way,
tulips droop from their vases,
and death has never had so many faces.
That’s the time to go out at dusk when even the deaf talk softly;
Don’t look at the hummingbird hovering
afraid of the bubbles rising in their nectar—
Bluebirds know of danger, their air made of smoke–
large wings of prey
never far distant—
Try to find the bluebirds in their church of air,
star seeds of sound that crystallize, then burst.
Bionote
Grace Cavalieri is the author of 20 books and chapbooks of poetry. She’s had 26 plays produced on American stages, most recently “Anna Nicole: Blonde Glory,” NYC, 2011. She founded two small presses, still thriving, “The Washington Writer’s Publishing House” and “The Bunny and the Crocodile Press.” She founded, produces and hosts “The Poet and the Poem, for public radio, 20 years “live” on WPFW-FM, 21 years from the Library of Congress,” now celebrating her 42 years on-air. She’s the poetry columnist/reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books. Among honors Grace holds 2013 Associated Writer’s Program’s George Garrett Award, the Pen-Fiction Award, two Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, the Bordighera Poetry Award, two Paterson Poetry Awards, the inaugural Folger Library Columbia Award, The Washington Independent Review Lifetime Achievement Award, and The CPB Silver Medal.
To be at peace, we’re told there is no other world
outside ourselves,
to water the seed every day.
Let us think of Yeats,
“Things reveal themselves passing away,”
of Eliot, “A sudden piercing joy.”
We’ve learned to hold suffering like
the wind, the weather, the sound of the rain,
yet as I sit
writing with a borrowed pen
fireflies vanish in the sky,
and under the slivered moon
we begin to lose our loneliness
but should this pass away
into time’s web
we’ll touch with a hand of tenderness again,
remembering the poet who wrote
“Do what you can with this.”
BLUEBIRDS
In the small grey hut of self-doubt where the ceilings are too low for you to stand,
by the road where your friend would only drive you half-way home,
next to the trench of holes filled with grief and wrong choices,
where it’s better not to know how you should do things a different way,
tulips droop from their vases,
and death has never had so many faces.
That’s the time to go out at dusk when even the deaf talk softly;
Don’t look at the hummingbird hovering
afraid of the bubbles rising in their nectar—
Bluebirds know of danger, their air made of smoke–
large wings of prey
never far distant—
Try to find the bluebirds in their church of air,
star seeds of sound that crystallize, then burst.
Bionote
Grace Cavalieri is the author of 20 books and chapbooks of poetry. She’s had 26 plays produced on American stages, most recently “Anna Nicole: Blonde Glory,” NYC, 2011. She founded two small presses, still thriving, “The Washington Writer’s Publishing House” and “The Bunny and the Crocodile Press.” She founded, produces and hosts “The Poet and the Poem, for public radio, 20 years “live” on WPFW-FM, 21 years from the Library of Congress,” now celebrating her 42 years on-air. She’s the poetry columnist/reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books. Among honors Grace holds 2013 Associated Writer’s Program’s George Garrett Award, the Pen-Fiction Award, two Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, the Bordighera Poetry Award, two Paterson Poetry Awards, the inaugural Folger Library Columbia Award, The Washington Independent Review Lifetime Achievement Award, and The CPB Silver Medal.
5 Poems by JL Jacobs
On Wagner’s Die Walküre: Or Three Meditations on Love
Listening tuned in
to that red radio box
that echoes
coughs in front rows
of the opera house.
Incest. Transcendence in love
through death. Themes for today.
She longed for the book to read
since she could not see the opera.
She understood his Tristan
running seaward ripping
his bandages last
hold to earth (both) lightly tethered
hear.
His aim ascension upon their union.
In all that darkness is more light
than we can bear witness
at this time.
On That Appalachian Wail
I.)
Two violins and a bass. But we don’t call them violins.
We call them fiddles. You might need a footnote for your refined reader on fiddle.
Like an instrument…like something you do in between other things….like fiddle around.
II.)
Tell me the key, Anna, is it a bright gold G?
Usher. She mean. The one who escorts the bare-shouldered ladies.
Like that young man Paul in Willa Cather’s story. That’s you, Anna.
Another two tracked trestle
story
of love bridged
over
canyons thousands of feet
to ground.
“Leave him go, girl.”
On Cheerfulness and Forgiving in Advance
I.)
Sobered by her
words—packed down hard.
Belle Miriam Silverman
Brooklyn born Diva to become.
“I may not always be happy,
but I try to always be cheerful.”
II.)
Remember that day they would leave
off reading?
Paolo and Francesca I mean.
Caught whirling ever another around.
Winded. Tempested.
Spirits, drive on.
III.)
Test of her love and cheerfulness
yet to come. Spread
under brilliant Finnish revontulet.
Stumbled when she saw “saw praise
is the gate” to enter in.
IV.)
Emerald in her that green day spray.
Byron’s Aurora &
borealis quiet places
under an ever luminescent
sky. These your humble dreams
of heaven. Christmas on earth,
as Rimbaud would say.
V.)
Live up. Love up. Fill up.
Anna, drive you on in.
Back you on in to that town
of reckoning.
Her disembarkment: less
than theatrical. No less
exiled.
Slipped out the back
in Amsterdam fashion.
And Shakespeare’s in the alley
so the good poet says.
Blowing.
Everything is blowing
said Reneé Fleming that Saturday
to Plácido Domingo at the Met
live radio broadcast of Roméo et Juliette.
VI.)
Sit round a spell. Fiddle. Pull up a chair.
I might tell you about a four year
downpull
to a full fathom five
whelmed, helmed over.
Might tell you
bout that second chair
stare nailed to the floor.
Might tell you bout
breakin the glass door
on my ways outa there.
On Root Cellars
for my five year old nephew, Kade
Your Grandmother Lottie Marie,
she doctored with roots, baby.
Like sassafras, mandrake, snakeroot.
Remember that bag of asafetida
tied round her neck?
Could put’em on
if she wanted.
Work them roots
poulticed down
mirror boxed.
She could lift them too.
Gated all awake or Andante Festivo
I.)
There are hands around a small neck.
Climb in closer.
without line these your limbs, gills,
wrist a small cut on a mid-season day.
Now the squirrel arabesques
limb to limb
dropping not falling.
II.)
Gated all awake. Eaten all your conflagrated hate.
Pulled down toward. Pull down toward.
This your cord.
Wrapped round her neck.
III.)
Swallow contempt with a full glass of water—like your Thorazine, baby.
IV.)
What would you have me tell you? Do you want to peer in the window of anyone’s wreck? Not just our good Lady Di.? Just plain old anyone. What you want to know? You know it already. We all dying of something. Some just don’t know what.
V.)
“Feel it in the wind in the wind in the wind and it’s upside down
feel it in the dust since I got off the bus…”
…yeah, she’d let them stand in good Rosemary
for her proxy. She’d tuck the blessed handkerchief into her pillow.
VI.)
Swallow forgiveness. Large gulps. Stay with me now, Grandmother. Help me for-give her sin. Un-remembered sin.
VII.)
The surgeon would cut Anna’s throat. Ring round rosey red. Scar her pretty white neck. Scar her pretty white neck. It was called “playing the violin”.
VIII.)
The irony: This was her neck job—performed by a neurosurgeon not a plastic one. This was because of her sin. Mistress-sin. They often die young. Young strung sin and all un-done.
IX)
The best hope: To live long enough to make it to the convent. “And give him up girl. He is your own un-doing. And don’t you even hold out hope that he get to Amesbury before you go. Don’t hold out any hope on his becoming a hermit either.”
X.)
It’s time I be headin’ out. Better get on down the road—they is some good folks up there I got to catch myself up to. Anna better put her travelin shoes on now. We leaving Lafayette.
Originally published in Ploughshares, Winter 2008.
(* Andante Festivo composed by Jean Sibelius originally scored for string quartet in 1922, but re-scored for string orchestra and timpani in 1938.
(*Amesbury nunnery where Queen Guinevere retired after Arthur's death.)
Bionote
JL Jacobs, MFA, Brown University, is the author of four volumes of poetry. Work has appeared in numerous journals including Ploughshares, New American Writing, and New Orleans Review. Representative work is anthologized in American Poetry: The Next Generation, Carnegie Mellon UP. She was a 2017 nominee for Poet Laureate of Oklahoma. She studied with C.D. Wright, John Yau, and Keith Waldrop. She serves as editor/art director for Abstract Magazine: Contemporary Expressions which was included in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses Series XLIII, 2019. (abstractmagazinetv.com)
Listening tuned in
to that red radio box
that echoes
coughs in front rows
of the opera house.
Incest. Transcendence in love
through death. Themes for today.
She longed for the book to read
since she could not see the opera.
She understood his Tristan
running seaward ripping
his bandages last
hold to earth (both) lightly tethered
hear.
His aim ascension upon their union.
In all that darkness is more light
than we can bear witness
at this time.
On That Appalachian Wail
I.)
Two violins and a bass. But we don’t call them violins.
We call them fiddles. You might need a footnote for your refined reader on fiddle.
Like an instrument…like something you do in between other things….like fiddle around.
II.)
Tell me the key, Anna, is it a bright gold G?
Usher. She mean. The one who escorts the bare-shouldered ladies.
Like that young man Paul in Willa Cather’s story. That’s you, Anna.
Another two tracked trestle
story
of love bridged
over
canyons thousands of feet
to ground.
“Leave him go, girl.”
On Cheerfulness and Forgiving in Advance
I.)
Sobered by her
words—packed down hard.
Belle Miriam Silverman
Brooklyn born Diva to become.
“I may not always be happy,
but I try to always be cheerful.”
II.)
Remember that day they would leave
off reading?
Paolo and Francesca I mean.
Caught whirling ever another around.
Winded. Tempested.
Spirits, drive on.
III.)
Test of her love and cheerfulness
yet to come. Spread
under brilliant Finnish revontulet.
Stumbled when she saw “saw praise
is the gate” to enter in.
IV.)
Emerald in her that green day spray.
Byron’s Aurora &
borealis quiet places
under an ever luminescent
sky. These your humble dreams
of heaven. Christmas on earth,
as Rimbaud would say.
V.)
Live up. Love up. Fill up.
Anna, drive you on in.
Back you on in to that town
of reckoning.
Her disembarkment: less
than theatrical. No less
exiled.
Slipped out the back
in Amsterdam fashion.
And Shakespeare’s in the alley
so the good poet says.
Blowing.
Everything is blowing
said Reneé Fleming that Saturday
to Plácido Domingo at the Met
live radio broadcast of Roméo et Juliette.
VI.)
Sit round a spell. Fiddle. Pull up a chair.
I might tell you about a four year
downpull
to a full fathom five
whelmed, helmed over.
Might tell you
bout that second chair
stare nailed to the floor.
Might tell you bout
breakin the glass door
on my ways outa there.
On Root Cellars
for my five year old nephew, Kade
Your Grandmother Lottie Marie,
she doctored with roots, baby.
Like sassafras, mandrake, snakeroot.
Remember that bag of asafetida
tied round her neck?
Could put’em on
if she wanted.
Work them roots
poulticed down
mirror boxed.
She could lift them too.
Gated all awake or Andante Festivo
I.)
There are hands around a small neck.
Climb in closer.
without line these your limbs, gills,
wrist a small cut on a mid-season day.
Now the squirrel arabesques
limb to limb
dropping not falling.
II.)
Gated all awake. Eaten all your conflagrated hate.
Pulled down toward. Pull down toward.
This your cord.
Wrapped round her neck.
III.)
Swallow contempt with a full glass of water—like your Thorazine, baby.
IV.)
What would you have me tell you? Do you want to peer in the window of anyone’s wreck? Not just our good Lady Di.? Just plain old anyone. What you want to know? You know it already. We all dying of something. Some just don’t know what.
V.)
“Feel it in the wind in the wind in the wind and it’s upside down
feel it in the dust since I got off the bus…”
…yeah, she’d let them stand in good Rosemary
for her proxy. She’d tuck the blessed handkerchief into her pillow.
VI.)
Swallow forgiveness. Large gulps. Stay with me now, Grandmother. Help me for-give her sin. Un-remembered sin.
VII.)
The surgeon would cut Anna’s throat. Ring round rosey red. Scar her pretty white neck. Scar her pretty white neck. It was called “playing the violin”.
VIII.)
The irony: This was her neck job—performed by a neurosurgeon not a plastic one. This was because of her sin. Mistress-sin. They often die young. Young strung sin and all un-done.
IX)
The best hope: To live long enough to make it to the convent. “And give him up girl. He is your own un-doing. And don’t you even hold out hope that he get to Amesbury before you go. Don’t hold out any hope on his becoming a hermit either.”
X.)
It’s time I be headin’ out. Better get on down the road—they is some good folks up there I got to catch myself up to. Anna better put her travelin shoes on now. We leaving Lafayette.
Originally published in Ploughshares, Winter 2008.
(* Andante Festivo composed by Jean Sibelius originally scored for string quartet in 1922, but re-scored for string orchestra and timpani in 1938.
(*Amesbury nunnery where Queen Guinevere retired after Arthur's death.)
Bionote
JL Jacobs, MFA, Brown University, is the author of four volumes of poetry. Work has appeared in numerous journals including Ploughshares, New American Writing, and New Orleans Review. Representative work is anthologized in American Poetry: The Next Generation, Carnegie Mellon UP. She was a 2017 nominee for Poet Laureate of Oklahoma. She studied with C.D. Wright, John Yau, and Keith Waldrop. She serves as editor/art director for Abstract Magazine: Contemporary Expressions which was included in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses Series XLIII, 2019. (abstractmagazinetv.com)
5 Poems by Allen Qing Yuan
Buddha Beads
17 spheres conceived by the flesh of earth and water
each one a wish,
to keep myself restrained by good faith
rich cocoa coconut shells, albeit grazes and nicks,
each one a wish
weathered and dropping
yet so creamy like euphony from the lips
each one a wish
unspoken but powerfully recited
inscribed with mini-mighty Buddhas
each one a wish
to be enshrined and embraced
the stretchy wire coiled through and up into delicate loops
each one a dying wish
heading towards where they're all tied up
the carvings of Asian depictions
each one a wish
for luck to somehow hang around my hands
*
Heartscaping: Three Chinese Characters
思: thought takes place
In the field of heart
闷: depressed when your heart is
Shut behind a door
忍：tolerate with a knife
Right above your heart
Matrix of Creation
Like water
Life flows along
Fiction rendered into fact
Like steam
Consciousness evaporates above
Evil turned into good
Like ice
Spirits crystallizes beyond
Ugly made beautiful
Word Play
If you could
Which English word
Would you become? Which?
I would as lief
Be ‘life’:
I may well turn out a ‘lie’
Without f--, but possessed in this word
My spelling contains many an ‘if’
Yes, to live a life is to
Go through as many an if
As you might wish to wish
Last Prayer
Jesus my dear Lord!
Were I
Really to have an afterlife
I hope to become a wolf, or
A fir, for instance
Just to be a bit more, or even less
Than a human being
Bionote
Allen Qing Yuan, author of Traffic Light, is a 2-time Pushcart and 2-time Best of the Net nominee. A co-editor of Poetry Pacific, Allen is just starting to work as a junior accountant in Vancouver. Since grade 10, Allen has had poetry appear in more than 70 literary publications across 16 countries, which include Cordite Poetry Review, Literary Review of Canada, Poetry Scotland, Shampoo and Spillway.
17 spheres conceived by the flesh of earth and water
each one a wish,
to keep myself restrained by good faith
rich cocoa coconut shells, albeit grazes and nicks,
each one a wish
weathered and dropping
yet so creamy like euphony from the lips
each one a wish
unspoken but powerfully recited
inscribed with mini-mighty Buddhas
each one a wish
to be enshrined and embraced
the stretchy wire coiled through and up into delicate loops
each one a dying wish
heading towards where they're all tied up
the carvings of Asian depictions
each one a wish
for luck to somehow hang around my hands
*
Heartscaping: Three Chinese Characters
思: thought takes place
In the field of heart
闷: depressed when your heart is
Shut behind a door
忍：tolerate with a knife
Right above your heart
Matrix of Creation
Like water
Life flows along
Fiction rendered into fact
Like steam
Consciousness evaporates above
Evil turned into good
Like ice
Spirits crystallizes beyond
Ugly made beautiful
Word Play
If you could
Which English word
Would you become? Which?
I would as lief
Be ‘life’:
I may well turn out a ‘lie’
Without f--, but possessed in this word
My spelling contains many an ‘if’
Yes, to live a life is to
Go through as many an if
As you might wish to wish
Last Prayer
Jesus my dear Lord!
Were I
Really to have an afterlife
I hope to become a wolf, or
A fir, for instance
Just to be a bit more, or even less
Than a human being
Bionote
Allen Qing Yuan, author of Traffic Light, is a 2-time Pushcart and 2-time Best of the Net nominee. A co-editor of Poetry Pacific, Allen is just starting to work as a junior accountant in Vancouver. Since grade 10, Allen has had poetry appear in more than 70 literary publications across 16 countries, which include Cordite Poetry Review, Literary Review of Canada, Poetry Scotland, Shampoo and Spillway.
1 Poem by John Grey
WEDDING CAKE
The piece of cake is twelve months old,
hidden in the freezer.
According to local folk-lore,
it’s to be eaten on our anniversary,
to see how love’s appetite is holding up.
But should cake really be the deciding factor
in a relationship?
For all its time in cryo-temperatures,
it’s surely as stale as a grandparent’s jokes by his,
rock hard, unfitting for a memory
of that long-ago camera-snapping day.
That cake has served its time.
I vow we remove it from behind
the frozen steaks,
pretend to nibble on it,
then toss it in the trash.
We’ll have served tradition.
We just won’t have bitten
into that white and rose-red concrete frosting.
or tasted sugar in its dotage.
We can tell anyone who asks
that, after all this time,
the slice was still scrumptious.
The truth lies somewhere
in the touch, the feel of you,
the gentle salvos of your presence.
Meanwhile, lies can have their cake.
They can eat it to.
Bionote
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.
The piece of cake is twelve months old,
hidden in the freezer.
According to local folk-lore,
it’s to be eaten on our anniversary,
to see how love’s appetite is holding up.
But should cake really be the deciding factor
in a relationship?
For all its time in cryo-temperatures,
it’s surely as stale as a grandparent’s jokes by his,
rock hard, unfitting for a memory
of that long-ago camera-snapping day.
That cake has served its time.
I vow we remove it from behind
the frozen steaks,
pretend to nibble on it,
then toss it in the trash.
We’ll have served tradition.
We just won’t have bitten
into that white and rose-red concrete frosting.
or tasted sugar in its dotage.
We can tell anyone who asks
that, after all this time,
the slice was still scrumptious.
The truth lies somewhere
in the touch, the feel of you,
the gentle salvos of your presence.
Meanwhile, lies can have their cake.
They can eat it to.
Bionote
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.
1 Poem by Andrena Zawinski
ABZ Boy Shot in Lucky’s Lot
in the Year of the Rat
His family turned the supermarket parking lot stall
into an altar, lavished it with stalks of quince buds
and peach blossoms inside a bird of paradise vase––
for growth and for luck, for love and for life.
In front of his high school graduation photo,
they plated mandarin oranges for wealth and longevity,
lit batches of incense in an auspicious red bowl
for the journey of the faithful.
Someone else had already turned the parking lot stall
into a shooting gallery. Someone else made his bones
doming this number one son and maybe running off
to tag tunnel walls, or maybe getting a Wah Ching
eagle claw tattoo, maybe doing donuts
in a highway sideshow––all his nunchucks and guns
aimed at the heavens and missing the mark.
—Appears in the book by the author, Landings.
Bionote
in the Year of the Rat
His family turned the supermarket parking lot stall
into an altar, lavished it with stalks of quince buds
and peach blossoms inside a bird of paradise vase––
for growth and for luck, for love and for life.
In front of his high school graduation photo,
they plated mandarin oranges for wealth and longevity,
lit batches of incense in an auspicious red bowl
for the journey of the faithful.
Someone else had already turned the parking lot stall
into a shooting gallery. Someone else made his bones
doming this number one son and maybe running off
to tag tunnel walls, or maybe getting a Wah Ching
eagle claw tattoo, maybe doing donuts
in a highway sideshow––all his nunchucks and guns
aimed at the heavens and missing the mark.
—Appears in the book by the author, Landings.
Bionote
Andrena Zawinski’s third and most recent poetry collection is Landings from Kelsay Books. Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, social concern and have appeared in Progressive Magazine, Verse Daily, Rattle, Nimrod, Comstock Review, Aeolian Harp, and others. Veteran teacher of writing and feminist activist, she founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.
3 Poems by Allan Kolski Horwitz
BRINGING FORTH
Eve was there
Alone
She had no need for another
She was full breasted
And she lay in the garden
Seeded herself
And her milk made her happy
Eve after Eve after Eve
But when the moon was full and red
A warring rod and whirling light
Disturbed her womb
So Eve made Adam
Till a hard-muscled child pulsed out
Made herself and unmade herself
Made a man to stand
Beside and against her
It is never quiet in the garden
There is always vibration
And still Eve lies alone
Bringing forth Adam after Adam after Adam
STATE OF THE DOMINANT SPECIES
One point two billion crammed on the polluted banks of a caste-ridden Hindu ethno-nationalist river
Another one point three billion squatting under the glare of a Fong Kong Communist Confucian robot
Over six hundred million in the Cradle of Humankind crushed under the sagging belly of the Big Man and his sadistic cohorts
Over four hundred million crucified on the patios of sunglassesed colonials and Bolivarian generalissimos
Another three hundred and forty million dangling at the end of kryptonite missile heads emblazoned with the stars and stripes of puritanical slavers
And close by another two hundred odd million bored by Brussels and strangled with the toxic tape of snarling lily-white borders
Rivalled only by the one hundred million licking the KGB’s lips with their frozen sweat
Beside the seventy-four hundred million women forced to robe the rape fantasies of bearded children
And the five hundred and twenty-nine million depressives devoted to gurus who ride pope mobiles over a canonical cliff
And the thirteen million paedophiles porning their hormones while chanting the bitch names of their Heavenly Mother
And so this garden roasts under a witless sun
This i wrote after receiving yr
first letter
sithanda wami:
why should I adorn this feeling of you around me,
of me around you,
with these dangerous jewels of word-pictures?
one night I heard you say
‘hold me’
twice
light
heavy water fell
into the pool prism of our embrace
Bionote
ALLAN KOLSKI HORWITZ continues to be a writer in various genres as well as being an educator and activist. He is a member of the Botsotso Jesters poetry performance group, the Botsotso Publishing editorial board and is co-ordinator of the Botsotso Ensemble schools performing arts program. He has published four books of poetry (Call from the Free State, Saving Water, There are Two Birds at My Window, The Colours of Our Flag), written and directed five of his own plays and published three collections of short fiction.
Eve was there
Alone
She had no need for another
She was full breasted
And she lay in the garden
Seeded herself
And her milk made her happy
Eve after Eve after Eve
But when the moon was full and red
A warring rod and whirling light
Disturbed her womb
So Eve made Adam
Till a hard-muscled child pulsed out
Made herself and unmade herself
Made a man to stand
Beside and against her
It is never quiet in the garden
There is always vibration
And still Eve lies alone
Bringing forth Adam after Adam after Adam
STATE OF THE DOMINANT SPECIES
One point two billion crammed on the polluted banks of a caste-ridden Hindu ethno-nationalist river
Another one point three billion squatting under the glare of a Fong Kong Communist Confucian robot
Over six hundred million in the Cradle of Humankind crushed under the sagging belly of the Big Man and his sadistic cohorts
Over four hundred million crucified on the patios of sunglassesed colonials and Bolivarian generalissimos
Another three hundred and forty million dangling at the end of kryptonite missile heads emblazoned with the stars and stripes of puritanical slavers
And close by another two hundred odd million bored by Brussels and strangled with the toxic tape of snarling lily-white borders
Rivalled only by the one hundred million licking the KGB’s lips with their frozen sweat
Beside the seventy-four hundred million women forced to robe the rape fantasies of bearded children
And the five hundred and twenty-nine million depressives devoted to gurus who ride pope mobiles over a canonical cliff
And the thirteen million paedophiles porning their hormones while chanting the bitch names of their Heavenly Mother
And so this garden roasts under a witless sun
This i wrote after receiving yr
first letter
sithanda wami:
why should I adorn this feeling of you around me,
of me around you,
with these dangerous jewels of word-pictures?
one night I heard you say
‘hold me’
twice
light
heavy water fell
into the pool prism of our embrace
Bionote
ALLAN KOLSKI HORWITZ continues to be a writer in various genres as well as being an educator and activist. He is a member of the Botsotso Jesters poetry performance group, the Botsotso Publishing editorial board and is co-ordinator of the Botsotso Ensemble schools performing arts program. He has published four books of poetry (Call from the Free State, Saving Water, There are Two Birds at My Window, The Colours of Our Flag), written and directed five of his own plays and published three collections of short fiction.
2 Poems by Jeff Burt
Storm
The storm blew blue eucalyptus
leaves like coins spilling
from the slots of a one-armed bandit,
your dog a gambler
that didn’t know what to do
with the riches piling at her feet.
Thunder came and went but stayed
inside the head, a migraine,
vertigo, syncope.
All these rough isobars,
storm a raw pugilist
come to shake his fists
and drool from his maw,
who threatens to stay
until he is fought.
You’re afraid, hide indoors,
deking, bobbing, flinching,
hair on your arms tentacular.
You sleep in fits. By dawn
you find him on a different card
spouting in another city.
Score
Notes fell from trees
as robins and woodpeckers
jostled for plums.
Below, I looked up
in a moment of bliss
as if gathering a song
years later I would sing
in the trials of loneliness,
a soldier who finds rapture
in the minute the guns
have gone quiet
before the killing begins
Bionote
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife. He works in mental health.
The storm blew blue eucalyptus
leaves like coins spilling
from the slots of a one-armed bandit,
your dog a gambler
that didn’t know what to do
with the riches piling at her feet.
Thunder came and went but stayed
inside the head, a migraine,
vertigo, syncope.
All these rough isobars,
storm a raw pugilist
come to shake his fists
and drool from his maw,
who threatens to stay
until he is fought.
You’re afraid, hide indoors,
deking, bobbing, flinching,
hair on your arms tentacular.
You sleep in fits. By dawn
you find him on a different card
spouting in another city.
Score
Notes fell from trees
as robins and woodpeckers
jostled for plums.
Below, I looked up
in a moment of bliss
as if gathering a song
years later I would sing
in the trials of loneliness,
a soldier who finds rapture
in the minute the guns
have gone quiet
before the killing begins
Bionote
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife. He works in mental health.
3 Poems by Andrea Moorhead
Self-scrutiny
Mirrors are cold against the skin
a certain distance is required to let in the light
absorb and realign the rays
twist the skein of fire
around the head
tight compress or poultice
there isn’t any difference now
the bleeding has stopped
and eyes gleam out in the night.
Strange Interactions
Black moons seed snow
wavering grain, flickering lights
a band of restless particles
whenever you turn the page
or try to open the door.
Other Cosmologies
Unstitching the roads, pulling out the long rose fibers dangling from trees, moving along quickly, the concrete soft grey today, the stream swiftly by the side of road, clatter of beer cans if the car swerves, heavy dew and fog, ears against the noise wall, the sound barrier, the whistle of a train in the distance, it is yellow gold, it has petals of smoke and sparkling flowers, but nobody believes there are gardens on the sun that sway and contract, expand and disappear into the emptiness, into the conjectural spaces behind today, unstitching the roads, pulling along the silken fleece of the air, the car hugs the road, trees arching overhead, moving along as we turn around the sun, planting the blackened seeds that survived the fall.
Bionote
Andrea Moorhead is editor of Osiris and translator of contemporary Francophone poetry. Moorhead publishes in French and in English. Poetry collections include From a Grove of Aspen (University of Salzburg Press), The Carver’s Dream (Red Dragonfly Press 2018), and À l’ombre de ta voix (Le Noroît). Translations include Night Watch (Abderrahmane Djelfaoui, Red Dragonfly Press), and Dark Menagerie (Élise Turcotte, Guernica Editions, 2014). She is the featured poet in the autumn 2018 issue of The Bitter Oleander.
Mirrors are cold against the skin
a certain distance is required to let in the light
absorb and realign the rays
twist the skein of fire
around the head
tight compress or poultice
there isn’t any difference now
the bleeding has stopped
and eyes gleam out in the night.
Strange Interactions
Black moons seed snow
wavering grain, flickering lights
a band of restless particles
whenever you turn the page
or try to open the door.
Other Cosmologies
Unstitching the roads, pulling out the long rose fibers dangling from trees, moving along quickly, the concrete soft grey today, the stream swiftly by the side of road, clatter of beer cans if the car swerves, heavy dew and fog, ears against the noise wall, the sound barrier, the whistle of a train in the distance, it is yellow gold, it has petals of smoke and sparkling flowers, but nobody believes there are gardens on the sun that sway and contract, expand and disappear into the emptiness, into the conjectural spaces behind today, unstitching the roads, pulling along the silken fleece of the air, the car hugs the road, trees arching overhead, moving along as we turn around the sun, planting the blackened seeds that survived the fall.
Bionote
Andrea Moorhead is editor of Osiris and translator of contemporary Francophone poetry. Moorhead publishes in French and in English. Poetry collections include From a Grove of Aspen (University of Salzburg Press), The Carver’s Dream (Red Dragonfly Press 2018), and À l’ombre de ta voix (Le Noroît). Translations include Night Watch (Abderrahmane Djelfaoui, Red Dragonfly Press), and Dark Menagerie (Élise Turcotte, Guernica Editions, 2014). She is the featured poet in the autumn 2018 issue of The Bitter Oleander.
1 Poem by Richard D. Houff
Afterword
Her shadow drifts
into a play of light leaving me quite alone
Near the river, a blue heron’s eye
scolds my presence
I move quietly away
distancing myself by way of apology
Bionote
Richard D. Houff was the editor of Heeltap Magazine from 1986 to 2010. He has had poetry and prose published in Brooklyn Review, Chiron Review, Louisiana Review, Midwest Quarterly, Nixes Mate Review, North American Review, Rattle, and many other fine magazines.
Her shadow drifts
into a play of light leaving me quite alone
Near the river, a blue heron’s eye
scolds my presence
I move quietly away
distancing myself by way of apology
Bionote
Richard D. Houff was the editor of Heeltap Magazine from 1986 to 2010. He has had poetry and prose published in Brooklyn Review, Chiron Review, Louisiana Review, Midwest Quarterly, Nixes Mate Review, North American Review, Rattle, and many other fine magazines.
5 Poems by Lee Gould
The Photographer of Empty Lots
Darkness masks what
moves around his walls,
the room, the unexpected
obstacles
as though cut in rock
most of us avoid –
Is this where his Cyclops
sleeps, twisted
in that oversized sheet?
is that his cot?
there his empty food packets?
forks, spoons?
Suppose the photographer adjusted
the light? Lifted the shades?
Would he find his old Leica,
his light meter, his keys?
Un—
I feel untied tried
as in put upon
but more loosened from
as though I were
only partly
invited in…
Or inverted:
put upside down,
in the opposite position
back to front
as if I were
somewhere else
but not
firmly so
when you talk to me
while
I’m working
I start pulsing
as though counting,
then a lurch –
it’s not my stop but
a loop de loop,
a trick pilots in old days
prided themselves on
which must have caused
nose-bleed—
at least mentally;
how come
the co-pilot didn’t fall out which
at moments like these feels
exactly like that.
First published in La Presa, Issue 2, April 2017
The Last Year
I can’t say I was hungry my mother said,
cackling lasciviously,
her little sandwiches—
appetite enhancers, the nurse confided
you couldn’t enter her room
without at least half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
If you stood in the doorway empty-handed,
she’d point hungrily:
What do you have for me in that pocket?
her new fleshiness
encircled her
as though she were sitting
in a lake of herself
I can’t tell you the emptiness I felt,
yet charmed by what her tongue could bring
she lived happily.
Plants
Touch Me Not
If it isn’t perfect, it’s nothing -
by it I mean he or she
although sometimes when, sometimes where.
A silencer comes with my weapon,
and when I unholster, line up my shot,
fire – I disappear just like that,
the lovely orange in the little Christmas house –
only I’m still there, but with something
up my sleeve which is Goodbye.
Sporangium
I clothe you in an airy sheath, adhere
to your glossy surfaces, shade you, cozy you
under the hot sun. At last, you think
you’re getting the hang of it,
the give and take
of life, but make no mistake, when you
look about, the you you see
in stretchy unfolding, the curves
you didn’t know you had: flexible, reaching – you
in all your agency is me, and I’m hungry.
Ivy
The crevices you try to hide
I admire, nestle into, blossom.
How sturdy you are, how I flutter
in your shadow. Is my attention flattering?
My leafy attractions? In moonlight you gleam;
I darken, wither, but each day, as you hold me,
I grow. My roots thicken in you. I become
your extremities, the fingers, the dancing feet
or more accurately your glittering fringes.
In time, I’ll spread myself over you:
your masonry, your ledges and openings,
even as you crumble, I’ll hold you.
Plants was first published in La Presa, Issue 1, January, 2017
Closure
I still taste those years:
wooden with bronze pulls, you
staring at my oversized cushions,
a script I didn’t plan to interpret.
I wandered in fog,
the impressionist painting of my cataract days.
Why does memory bathe itself?
Astounded, sated, spooked?
The old furniture, those broken drawers,
the put-one-over smile as you fingered the knobs,
sizing up the ersatz jade, the scrapped Formica.
You a nuisance who drank a little, me pouring.
Bionote
Lee Gould, the editor of La Presa, a bilingual journal published three times annually is also a poet, translator and reviewer,. Her poems and reviews have appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, the Berkshire REview, Magma, Passager and others as well as anthologies in the US, England and Canada. Her chapbook Weeds was published in 2010. She lives in Guanajuato, MExico.
Darkness masks what
moves around his walls,
the room, the unexpected
obstacles
as though cut in rock
most of us avoid –
Is this where his Cyclops
sleeps, twisted
in that oversized sheet?
is that his cot?
there his empty food packets?
forks, spoons?
Suppose the photographer adjusted
the light? Lifted the shades?
Would he find his old Leica,
his light meter, his keys?
Un—
I feel untied tried
as in put upon
but more loosened from
as though I were
only partly
invited in…
Or inverted:
put upside down,
in the opposite position
back to front
as if I were
somewhere else
but not
firmly so
when you talk to me
while
I’m working
I start pulsing
as though counting,
then a lurch –
it’s not my stop but
a loop de loop,
a trick pilots in old days
prided themselves on
which must have caused
nose-bleed—
at least mentally;
how come
the co-pilot didn’t fall out which
at moments like these feels
exactly like that.
First published in La Presa, Issue 2, April 2017
The Last Year
I can’t say I was hungry my mother said,
cackling lasciviously,
her little sandwiches—
appetite enhancers, the nurse confided
you couldn’t enter her room
without at least half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
If you stood in the doorway empty-handed,
she’d point hungrily:
What do you have for me in that pocket?
her new fleshiness
encircled her
as though she were sitting
in a lake of herself
I can’t tell you the emptiness I felt,
yet charmed by what her tongue could bring
she lived happily.
Plants
Touch Me Not
If it isn’t perfect, it’s nothing -
by it I mean he or she
although sometimes when, sometimes where.
A silencer comes with my weapon,
and when I unholster, line up my shot,
fire – I disappear just like that,
the lovely orange in the little Christmas house –
only I’m still there, but with something
up my sleeve which is Goodbye.
Sporangium
I clothe you in an airy sheath, adhere
to your glossy surfaces, shade you, cozy you
under the hot sun. At last, you think
you’re getting the hang of it,
the give and take
of life, but make no mistake, when you
look about, the you you see
in stretchy unfolding, the curves
you didn’t know you had: flexible, reaching – you
in all your agency is me, and I’m hungry.
Ivy
The crevices you try to hide
I admire, nestle into, blossom.
How sturdy you are, how I flutter
in your shadow. Is my attention flattering?
My leafy attractions? In moonlight you gleam;
I darken, wither, but each day, as you hold me,
I grow. My roots thicken in you. I become
your extremities, the fingers, the dancing feet
or more accurately your glittering fringes.
In time, I’ll spread myself over you:
your masonry, your ledges and openings,
even as you crumble, I’ll hold you.
Plants was first published in La Presa, Issue 1, January, 2017
Closure
I still taste those years:
wooden with bronze pulls, you
staring at my oversized cushions,
a script I didn’t plan to interpret.
I wandered in fog,
the impressionist painting of my cataract days.
Why does memory bathe itself?
Astounded, sated, spooked?
The old furniture, those broken drawers,
the put-one-over smile as you fingered the knobs,
sizing up the ersatz jade, the scrapped Formica.
You a nuisance who drank a little, me pouring.
Bionote
Lee Gould, the editor of La Presa, a bilingual journal published three times annually is also a poet, translator and reviewer,. Her poems and reviews have appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, the Berkshire REview, Magma, Passager and others as well as anthologies in the US, England and Canada. Her chapbook Weeds was published in 2010. She lives in Guanajuato, MExico.
2 Poems by Ian Ganassi
UNSPOKEN REGULATIONS
Like a pigeon, the seagull gobbles the Wonder bread, then wanders away.
What a strange duplication, what a weird thing to say.
Then the homeless man whose bread it was
Walks through the tidal pools and drowns his sorrows in mud.
They were a match made in limbo
Or nowhere—heaven shining above, hell steaming below.
Are we being punished for our sins?
Whatever I did I’ll never do it again.
They wear their brains in their belly and their guts in their heads.
And now that their leader is king, it’s the end.
The end of time, the end of peace—
So much for the poor in spirit and the least of these.
But bereavement happens in any case;
Even more than taxes, death can’t be escaped.
“You’re a rough customer” she said,
Implying I should have been married or dead.
I was just waiting for the other shoe to fall,
Walking along, bouncing a green tennis ball.
The pregnant girl in the bake shop couldn’t stop eating the cornbread.
The whole idea gave me a terrible sense of dread.
I was just waiting for the heavy ax to fall,
Wondering what they had against a green tennis ball.
THE OTHER HAND
The triathlon only lasts until we die.
It was a strange story.
The endings we can no longer bear to look into.
The bridge of sighs,
The fountain of tears,
The bottomless pit of sleep.
He vomited forth the butterflies that were plaguing his stomach.
Someone said it was “magical realism.”
It “’becomes’ a catch-22.”
Blues figures on a harmonica.
“Don’t worry, you won’t get addicted.”
“Thanks, Ralph.”
Painted figures and written figures.
Strange figures, weird figures.
It all figures.
You figure, we figure, I figure, go figure.
Plaster or porcelain figures,
My father’s grace on the ice,
And so on and so forth.
“I would avoid the plural.”
What good advice.
The world is a difficult place to live.
It partly depends on when.
But don’t let on we depend.
The latter. The former.
Bionote
Ian Ganassi's poetry, prose and translations have appeared in more than 100 literary journals. Poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in New American Writing, The Yale Review, 2Bridges Review, American Journal of Poetry and Clockwise Cat, among many others. My poetry collection Mean Numbers was published in 2016, and is available on Amazon. His new collection of poems, True for the Moment, will be published in the fall of 2019 by MadHat Press. Selections from an ongoing collage collaboration with a painter can be found at www.thecorpses.com.
Like a pigeon, the seagull gobbles the Wonder bread, then wanders away.
What a strange duplication, what a weird thing to say.
Then the homeless man whose bread it was
Walks through the tidal pools and drowns his sorrows in mud.
They were a match made in limbo
Or nowhere—heaven shining above, hell steaming below.
Are we being punished for our sins?
Whatever I did I’ll never do it again.
They wear their brains in their belly and their guts in their heads.
And now that their leader is king, it’s the end.
The end of time, the end of peace—
So much for the poor in spirit and the least of these.
But bereavement happens in any case;
Even more than taxes, death can’t be escaped.
“You’re a rough customer” she said,
Implying I should have been married or dead.
I was just waiting for the other shoe to fall,
Walking along, bouncing a green tennis ball.
The pregnant girl in the bake shop couldn’t stop eating the cornbread.
The whole idea gave me a terrible sense of dread.
I was just waiting for the heavy ax to fall,
Wondering what they had against a green tennis ball.
THE OTHER HAND
The triathlon only lasts until we die.
It was a strange story.
The endings we can no longer bear to look into.
The bridge of sighs,
The fountain of tears,
The bottomless pit of sleep.
He vomited forth the butterflies that were plaguing his stomach.
Someone said it was “magical realism.”
It “’becomes’ a catch-22.”
Blues figures on a harmonica.
“Don’t worry, you won’t get addicted.”
“Thanks, Ralph.”
Painted figures and written figures.
Strange figures, weird figures.
It all figures.
You figure, we figure, I figure, go figure.
Plaster or porcelain figures,
My father’s grace on the ice,
And so on and so forth.
“I would avoid the plural.”
What good advice.
The world is a difficult place to live.
It partly depends on when.
But don’t let on we depend.
The latter. The former.
Bionote
Ian Ganassi's poetry, prose and translations have appeared in more than 100 literary journals. Poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in New American Writing, The Yale Review, 2Bridges Review, American Journal of Poetry and Clockwise Cat, among many others. My poetry collection Mean Numbers was published in 2016, and is available on Amazon. His new collection of poems, True for the Moment, will be published in the fall of 2019 by MadHat Press. Selections from an ongoing collage collaboration with a painter can be found at www.thecorpses.com.
4 Poems by Nina Rubinstein Alonso
Cold April bleak dark and dirty as the outer halls of hell
Ghost buildings used to be Brooks Brothers
Shreves and Bonwit Teller now closed down
moved around the block maybe wrecked
or bombed or burned or shoved across this or some
other city leaving bashed signs broken lumber cracked
bricks bent rebar detritus revised by catastrophe
why bother to memorize where anything is
though street names seem the same despite
arrows of misdirection pointing inexperienced
wandering or merely outdated eyes
that stone massif was an armory then a U. Mass.
library briefly beaming light on my poems
in a glass case with copies and revisions
joining thousands of other whispering pages
now flipped to a fancy restaurant
featuring valet service and posh platters
bedecked like somebody’s recycled wacky
parsley hat cute designer potatoes next to
clever spinach nestling slabs of morgue meat
I’ve trained myself to accept changes wear them
like time’s abundant decorations as what else to do
grateful branches survive though fiercely
trimmed back and squeezed for space
in this cold April bleak dark and dirty as the
outer halls of hell while I search buried fire
the ice and ache of it in daffodils and blue scylla
that row of magnolias along Beacon Street
pinched as they are in a city spilling throngs
of wild humans surging waste while buds push open
fragile and forgetful brief shocks of innocent bloom.
Hack
Somehow though dead three years which must be
exhausting my cousin Patti sent me a Facebook
message yesterday marked ‘private and personal’
distrust and suspicion are routine normal
trained to spot spies hit delete never open a hack
but curious to check obits as what if her husband
died and someone’s trying to tell me
peculiar finding many with the same name
Paul after Paul but the fourth photo is his face
his tenor voice sang at our wedding
but their kids don’t know me from anywhere
so it’s a hack of my dead cousin’s file
next day another ‘personal private’ Facebook
message this time from the daughter of a friend
worried she’s dead too I email though
this ‘message’ feels phony as last time
I saw this girl-- now a lawyer--she was in diapers
relief to get an email from New York saying
‘yes, it’s a hack’ assuring me Nahid’s fine
still writing stories momentarily alive what to say
about messy messages or whatever label
fits spidery threads of aesthetic disconnection
computer tech trolls digging into
what used to be more or less private life
not that I miss scratchy ink pens on paper
clumsy fingers clacking typewritten missives
it’s about one soul stretching to another in
conversation call it what you like feel free
to throw sentimental or nostalgic labels at me
I don’t care as it’s about connection closer to real.
Ibbetson #44 publication, fall/winter 2018
Chicken Camp
Two chicks my brother named
Bobby and Bobby after ball players
stop being cute when they grow into
roosters pecking each other
but one day they disappear and
I’m too young to understand
keep asking where did they go
and hear my mother say
they’ve gone to chicken camp
puzzling my baby mind as
I’m barely tall enough to see
what’s on the table but can recognize
animal legs identify whitish meat
I’m told are from entirely different
chickens not members of our family
this isn’t my first refusal of what’s
presented as food though the cat
eagerly devours what I spit out
as my small mouth hates the taste
can’t swallow flesh pulled from bones
the only skin I peel happily
is from a baked potato also pods of
of little green things I like to eat
one by one called peas.
Meeting Isaac Asimov at Mensa
Rick invites me to dinner at a Mensa meeting
everyone but me passed a test showing brilliance in mathematics
pleasure in puzzles ability to project shapes
mid air in three dimensions the sort of thing they do for fun
my safety is smiling silence the food routine Chinese take-out
and I’m excellent with chopsticks no humiliation
Rick introduces me to the man on my right
Isaac Asimov MIT professor resident genius wearing
glasses--sweet-faced--I tell him I’m a writer
and dancer love butterflies swirling
above flowers love leaping to music that sort of thing
I’ll never touch Rick or let him touch me
he’s not pretty just tall and craggy talking in clumsy puns
though he can spin tetrahedrons in his head though he’s
pathologically nice maybe guesses I’m here tonight
because I had nothing better to do maybe keeps hoping
Somehow Isaac guesses my heart story sends me flutters
of playful conversation pulls his chair close smiles
and starts to sing ‘Venezuela’ in a half-whisper unmistakable
breath of silken desire soft melody of sex
I melt listening easily flattered easily seduced wishing people
would disappear and the table full of left over food
and fortune cookies turn into a bed as Isaac’s song kisses my ear
Too soon it’s over Rick’s bristling blue fangs
dragon forefinger tapping my shoulder
people stirring in their chairs when Isaac squeezes my hand
says he has to go to a meeting and I’m paralyzed not sure
what to do what to say so keep smiling until my face aches
The love bubble swirling luminous floating toward the ceiling
reflecting colors of the perfect moment which
as I stand up--pops--but for years I wonder
even today was I an idiot not to say or do something more
it was long ago and I was newly divorced horribly young
dreams my only defense just an egg with no shell.
Published November 7, 2018, The Somerville Times, Lyrical Somerville, on line & paper
Bionote
My work has appeared in U. Mass. Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, New Boston Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Sumac, Southern Women’s Review, Tears and Laughter, etc. My poem Gender Veils received the 12th Annual Moon Prize from Writing in a Women’s Voice, and my chapbook Riot Wake will be published by Cervena Barva Press. My book This Body was published by David Godine Press. I'm also
a ballet teacher with a small school, director of Fresh Pond Ballet, www.freshpondballet.com , taught
at Boston Ballet for eleven years, and have always had double interests, which seems to be more
acceptable these days than it used to be.
Ghost buildings used to be Brooks Brothers
Shreves and Bonwit Teller now closed down
moved around the block maybe wrecked
or bombed or burned or shoved across this or some
other city leaving bashed signs broken lumber cracked
bricks bent rebar detritus revised by catastrophe
why bother to memorize where anything is
though street names seem the same despite
arrows of misdirection pointing inexperienced
wandering or merely outdated eyes
that stone massif was an armory then a U. Mass.
library briefly beaming light on my poems
in a glass case with copies and revisions
joining thousands of other whispering pages
now flipped to a fancy restaurant
featuring valet service and posh platters
bedecked like somebody’s recycled wacky
parsley hat cute designer potatoes next to
clever spinach nestling slabs of morgue meat
I’ve trained myself to accept changes wear them
like time’s abundant decorations as what else to do
grateful branches survive though fiercely
trimmed back and squeezed for space
in this cold April bleak dark and dirty as the
outer halls of hell while I search buried fire
the ice and ache of it in daffodils and blue scylla
that row of magnolias along Beacon Street
pinched as they are in a city spilling throngs
of wild humans surging waste while buds push open
fragile and forgetful brief shocks of innocent bloom.
Hack
Somehow though dead three years which must be
exhausting my cousin Patti sent me a Facebook
message yesterday marked ‘private and personal’
distrust and suspicion are routine normal
trained to spot spies hit delete never open a hack
but curious to check obits as what if her husband
died and someone’s trying to tell me
peculiar finding many with the same name
Paul after Paul but the fourth photo is his face
his tenor voice sang at our wedding
but their kids don’t know me from anywhere
so it’s a hack of my dead cousin’s file
next day another ‘personal private’ Facebook
message this time from the daughter of a friend
worried she’s dead too I email though
this ‘message’ feels phony as last time
I saw this girl-- now a lawyer--she was in diapers
relief to get an email from New York saying
‘yes, it’s a hack’ assuring me Nahid’s fine
still writing stories momentarily alive what to say
about messy messages or whatever label
fits spidery threads of aesthetic disconnection
computer tech trolls digging into
what used to be more or less private life
not that I miss scratchy ink pens on paper
clumsy fingers clacking typewritten missives
it’s about one soul stretching to another in
conversation call it what you like feel free
to throw sentimental or nostalgic labels at me
I don’t care as it’s about connection closer to real.
Ibbetson #44 publication, fall/winter 2018
Chicken Camp
Two chicks my brother named
Bobby and Bobby after ball players
stop being cute when they grow into
roosters pecking each other
but one day they disappear and
I’m too young to understand
keep asking where did they go
and hear my mother say
they’ve gone to chicken camp
puzzling my baby mind as
I’m barely tall enough to see
what’s on the table but can recognize
animal legs identify whitish meat
I’m told are from entirely different
chickens not members of our family
this isn’t my first refusal of what’s
presented as food though the cat
eagerly devours what I spit out
as my small mouth hates the taste
can’t swallow flesh pulled from bones
the only skin I peel happily
is from a baked potato also pods of
of little green things I like to eat
one by one called peas.
Meeting Isaac Asimov at Mensa
Rick invites me to dinner at a Mensa meeting
everyone but me passed a test showing brilliance in mathematics
pleasure in puzzles ability to project shapes
mid air in three dimensions the sort of thing they do for fun
my safety is smiling silence the food routine Chinese take-out
and I’m excellent with chopsticks no humiliation
Rick introduces me to the man on my right
Isaac Asimov MIT professor resident genius wearing
glasses--sweet-faced--I tell him I’m a writer
and dancer love butterflies swirling
above flowers love leaping to music that sort of thing
I’ll never touch Rick or let him touch me
he’s not pretty just tall and craggy talking in clumsy puns
though he can spin tetrahedrons in his head though he’s
pathologically nice maybe guesses I’m here tonight
because I had nothing better to do maybe keeps hoping
Somehow Isaac guesses my heart story sends me flutters
of playful conversation pulls his chair close smiles
and starts to sing ‘Venezuela’ in a half-whisper unmistakable
breath of silken desire soft melody of sex
I melt listening easily flattered easily seduced wishing people
would disappear and the table full of left over food
and fortune cookies turn into a bed as Isaac’s song kisses my ear
Too soon it’s over Rick’s bristling blue fangs
dragon forefinger tapping my shoulder
people stirring in their chairs when Isaac squeezes my hand
says he has to go to a meeting and I’m paralyzed not sure
what to do what to say so keep smiling until my face aches
The love bubble swirling luminous floating toward the ceiling
reflecting colors of the perfect moment which
as I stand up--pops--but for years I wonder
even today was I an idiot not to say or do something more
it was long ago and I was newly divorced horribly young
dreams my only defense just an egg with no shell.
Published November 7, 2018, The Somerville Times, Lyrical Somerville, on line & paper
Bionote
My work has appeared in U. Mass. Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, New Boston Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Sumac, Southern Women’s Review, Tears and Laughter, etc. My poem Gender Veils received the 12th Annual Moon Prize from Writing in a Women’s Voice, and my chapbook Riot Wake will be published by Cervena Barva Press. My book This Body was published by David Godine Press. I'm also
a ballet teacher with a small school, director of Fresh Pond Ballet, www.freshpondballet.com , taught
at Boston Ballet for eleven years, and have always had double interests, which seems to be more
acceptable these days than it used to be.
5 Poems by Yuan Changming
Home-Landing
Having nothing better to do, I kill
Time by looking at a traditional
Chinese painting on my iPad
Much enlarged, it appears like
A plain sheet of rice paper
Smeared with ink. I view it
In the presence of bonsai; I
Drop several thick strokes to the floor
Of history, leaving a few fine lines
Behind the sofa, & failing
To catch a colorless corner
Between black and white
It is a landscape newly relocated
Into my heart’s backyard. Then I sit
On my legs, meditating about
No light in the picture, no
Shadow of anything, no perspective
As in hell. Isn’t this the art of seeing?
Broadway.com
If ever at all, if only once
If you were
To have such a chance
Just keep driving
Drive forward
With no need to take a shoulder check
Despite so many beside you
Despite so much ahead & behind –
Along this new broadway, your car
(Like your body or thought)
Will adapt its shape like a stream
Of water running its own course
From past to future, amidst
Programmed sapiens, through
The flow of data
Until at the meeting point
Between yin & yang
Between 0 & 1
Between time & space
Loss, Lost, Losing
Last month it was my cellphone
Last night, my back head, where was
Implanted a wrong chip. & last
Moment I found my mind missing
Going back along the way, I tried
To retrieve it from my rage against
A rude fellow driver. Then in a fit
Of joy about the first child I had.
Followed by a deep regret… until
I got confused between memory &
Imagination, the former stored in
The left chamber of my heart, the latter
In the right.
When it was over-
Whelmed with joy or bitterness, I
Cannot tell which is my true past
(Or my possible future) as it over-
Flows from memory to
Imagination; perhaps, with my protobeing
The two might be somewhat identical, or
Other (than) wise (?)
Hocus Pocus
This [bread] is no other than
Jesus’ flesh
This [horse’s open mouth] is
Vaisvanara
This [word] has
A magic power
This [fish head] brings
Courage & posterity
This [fluid] cures
All diseases
This [sequence of syllables] drives away
All evils & devils
This [ritual] ensures
Good weather & good harvest
This [hat/hood] guarantees
Purity, loyalty
This [flag] leads right
To paradise
This [man] is
A living god
This [statue, foiled or not] is
Omnipotent
This [chip] will transform us
Into superbeings
So long as man is in his story
All is well that believes well
Speciation
O yeah! There are still sapiens on Earth. Often do we remember & feel more than proud that only we SuperSapiens exist, we the most sophisticated & most exquisite human-robot compounds. It is true that from time to time we cannot help recalling one or two of them, like Shakespeare & Einstein, but that’s when they pop up unexpectedly from the back of a chip as a couple of forgotten algorithms. Their story tells them they are much more developed physically & intellectually than chimpanzees, while in the heart of history the latter is at least spiritually far more respectable. Since sapiens have proven good for nobody, nothing but a sub species of waste wasting endless earthly resources, how can we rid our planet of them in such gargantuan crowds? -- To genocide them once & for all, or just to wait for their total self-destruction?
Bionote
Yuan Changming started to learn the English alphabet at age 19 and published several monographs on translation before leaving his native country. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Writing credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-2017), BestNewPoemsOnline and publications in 1,596 other literary outlets across 44 countries.
Having nothing better to do, I kill
Time by looking at a traditional
Chinese painting on my iPad
Much enlarged, it appears like
A plain sheet of rice paper
Smeared with ink. I view it
In the presence of bonsai; I
Drop several thick strokes to the floor
Of history, leaving a few fine lines
Behind the sofa, & failing
To catch a colorless corner
Between black and white
It is a landscape newly relocated
Into my heart’s backyard. Then I sit
On my legs, meditating about
No light in the picture, no
Shadow of anything, no perspective
As in hell. Isn’t this the art of seeing?
Broadway.com
If ever at all, if only once
If you were
To have such a chance
Just keep driving
Drive forward
With no need to take a shoulder check
Despite so many beside you
Despite so much ahead & behind –
Along this new broadway, your car
(Like your body or thought)
Will adapt its shape like a stream
Of water running its own course
From past to future, amidst
Programmed sapiens, through
The flow of data
Until at the meeting point
Between yin & yang
Between 0 & 1
Between time & space
Loss, Lost, Losing
Last month it was my cellphone
Last night, my back head, where was
Implanted a wrong chip. & last
Moment I found my mind missing
Going back along the way, I tried
To retrieve it from my rage against
A rude fellow driver. Then in a fit
Of joy about the first child I had.
Followed by a deep regret… until
I got confused between memory &
Imagination, the former stored in
The left chamber of my heart, the latter
In the right.
When it was over-
Whelmed with joy or bitterness, I
Cannot tell which is my true past
(Or my possible future) as it over-
Flows from memory to
Imagination; perhaps, with my protobeing
The two might be somewhat identical, or
Other (than) wise (?)
Hocus Pocus
This [bread] is no other than
Jesus’ flesh
This [horse’s open mouth] is
Vaisvanara
This [word] has
A magic power
This [fish head] brings
Courage & posterity
This [fluid] cures
All diseases
This [sequence of syllables] drives away
All evils & devils
This [ritual] ensures
Good weather & good harvest
This [hat/hood] guarantees
Purity, loyalty
This [flag] leads right
To paradise
This [man] is
A living god
This [statue, foiled or not] is
Omnipotent
This [chip] will transform us
Into superbeings
So long as man is in his story
All is well that believes well
Speciation
O yeah! There are still sapiens on Earth. Often do we remember & feel more than proud that only we SuperSapiens exist, we the most sophisticated & most exquisite human-robot compounds. It is true that from time to time we cannot help recalling one or two of them, like Shakespeare & Einstein, but that’s when they pop up unexpectedly from the back of a chip as a couple of forgotten algorithms. Their story tells them they are much more developed physically & intellectually than chimpanzees, while in the heart of history the latter is at least spiritually far more respectable. Since sapiens have proven good for nobody, nothing but a sub species of waste wasting endless earthly resources, how can we rid our planet of them in such gargantuan crowds? -- To genocide them once & for all, or just to wait for their total self-destruction?
Bionote
Yuan Changming started to learn the English alphabet at age 19 and published several monographs on translation before leaving his native country. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Writing credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-2017), BestNewPoemsOnline and publications in 1,596 other literary outlets across 44 countries.
5 Poems by Mendes Biondo
Slow Sunny Death
have mercy on me
this sunday the sun is hot
the wind is cool
birds are singing in love
and all is fine
have mercy on me
if I want to sleep
if I don’t want to get worried
if I decided to die slowly
in this sun-
day full of life
have mercy on me
because I have a strange way
to worship my gods
Closing The Curtain
at the end of the day
when all city lights
are off
when snoring of people
is the only blues
you can hear
and when the passing
of a car is similar
to a placid wave
ending its path on the sand
then
I can hear the noise
of all the things
never happened during the day
the pressure of tomorrow
the ecstasy of projects
that have not find an
obstacle yet
plato is sitting near to me
and his hyperuranic world
seems so real
I can catch an idea
and hide it under
my pillow
at the end of the day
with a job
with a woman
with a humanity
to find
the coming of the sandman
is your best blessing and
damnation
Hammond Organ Solo In An Empty Church
oh god
let her know
I was in love with her mouth
that time we danced
naked near the lake
one night like spirits
this is the
anima mundi
and I know I will
drink her again
‘cause she’s a fresh font
she baptized me
my god
and there were no blasphemies
I felt the trees
and the mountains
and the wind
they were calling
our names that night
I collapsed in her
worshipped her
I sang the sermons
as David did
but the people dancing with us
had naked ankles and
black curly hair
oh god if you can
hear me staying up there
‘cause here is a great mass
of naked bodies and lust
it’s a good place where to be
after all
and orgasms are our prayers
oh god
there is a place for you
and all your folks here
in the pub
a last dinner to say
goodbye
and leave here your son
he do not want to die
anymore
for a rolling calendar
Last Night I Had A Dream On The Seaside
woman
you’re a sacred fire
you’re like a guitar solo
I feel the vibes of the skin
dancing like the waves
powerful as the tide running
on oceanic beaches
woman
you're a purple sun
falling in the sea
woman
night is high now
and your body is moonshine
in this darkness made of sand
sweat and moans
A Room Made of Purple Petals
we chased each other that afternoon
little runs of love
then you said yes to me
with your bare hands
spring was all around
the grass was shining
the little lake was nipped by water drops
a blooming wisteria sheltered us
it was raining
on our hungry bodies
but we were kissing
and we just don’t care
Bionote
Mendes Biondo is an Italian journalist and author. His works appeared on Visual Verse, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Literary Yard, Angela Topping Hygge Feature, Indigent A La Carte, The BeZine, Scrittura Magazine, The Song Is, Poetry Pasta and other magazines. He is one of the editors of The Ramingo's Porch along with Marc Pietrzykowski and Catfish McDaris. His first book of poems "Spaghetti & Meatballs - Poems for Hot Organs" is published by Pski's Porch Publishing.
have mercy on me
this sunday the sun is hot
the wind is cool
birds are singing in love
and all is fine
have mercy on me
if I want to sleep
if I don’t want to get worried
if I decided to die slowly
in this sun-
day full of life
have mercy on me
because I have a strange way
to worship my gods
Closing The Curtain
at the end of the day
when all city lights
are off
when snoring of people
is the only blues
you can hear
and when the passing
of a car is similar
to a placid wave
ending its path on the sand
then
I can hear the noise
of all the things
never happened during the day
the pressure of tomorrow
the ecstasy of projects
that have not find an
obstacle yet
plato is sitting near to me
and his hyperuranic world
seems so real
I can catch an idea
and hide it under
my pillow
at the end of the day
with a job
with a woman
with a humanity
to find
the coming of the sandman
is your best blessing and
damnation
Hammond Organ Solo In An Empty Church
oh god
let her know
I was in love with her mouth
that time we danced
naked near the lake
one night like spirits
this is the
anima mundi
and I know I will
drink her again
‘cause she’s a fresh font
she baptized me
my god
and there were no blasphemies
I felt the trees
and the mountains
and the wind
they were calling
our names that night
I collapsed in her
worshipped her
I sang the sermons
as David did
but the people dancing with us
had naked ankles and
black curly hair
oh god if you can
hear me staying up there
‘cause here is a great mass
of naked bodies and lust
it’s a good place where to be
after all
and orgasms are our prayers
oh god
there is a place for you
and all your folks here
in the pub
a last dinner to say
goodbye
and leave here your son
he do not want to die
anymore
for a rolling calendar
Last Night I Had A Dream On The Seaside
woman
you’re a sacred fire
you’re like a guitar solo
I feel the vibes of the skin
dancing like the waves
powerful as the tide running
on oceanic beaches
woman
you're a purple sun
falling in the sea
woman
night is high now
and your body is moonshine
in this darkness made of sand
sweat and moans
A Room Made of Purple Petals
we chased each other that afternoon
little runs of love
then you said yes to me
with your bare hands
spring was all around
the grass was shining
the little lake was nipped by water drops
a blooming wisteria sheltered us
it was raining
on our hungry bodies
but we were kissing
and we just don’t care
Bionote
Mendes Biondo is an Italian journalist and author. His works appeared on Visual Verse, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Literary Yard, Angela Topping Hygge Feature, Indigent A La Carte, The BeZine, Scrittura Magazine, The Song Is, Poetry Pasta and other magazines. He is one of the editors of The Ramingo's Porch along with Marc Pietrzykowski and Catfish McDaris. His first book of poems "Spaghetti & Meatballs - Poems for Hot Organs" is published by Pski's Porch Publishing.
3 Poems by Judith A. Lawrence
1
the smell of bacon
drifts from the adjoining flat
blends with my coffee
2
a walk on the beach
sadness soon evaporates
the sky azure blue
3
walking on the path
a silver dollar shines bright
the day bears promise
bionote
Judith A. Lawrence is the editor/publisher of River Poets Journal. She is currently final editing a memoir, “What Fruit She Bears,” and a second book of short stories, “Uncharted Territories.” She has published several chapbooks of her poetry. Her poetry/fiction/memoir has been published in various anthologies, chapbooks, online and in print literary journals.
the smell of bacon
drifts from the adjoining flat
blends with my coffee
2
a walk on the beach
sadness soon evaporates
the sky azure blue
3
walking on the path
a silver dollar shines bright
the day bears promise
bionote
Judith A. Lawrence is the editor/publisher of River Poets Journal. She is currently final editing a memoir, “What Fruit She Bears,” and a second book of short stories, “Uncharted Territories.” She has published several chapbooks of her poetry. Her poetry/fiction/memoir has been published in various anthologies, chapbooks, online and in print literary journals.
2 Poems by Frances Koziar
Darkness and Dreams
I dreamed that my painting was about to fall
and I woke with a gasp, but when I dream
of being your prisoner again—back in that house—or of
the nameless murderers who hunt me when you
grow bored I wake silently, slipping my eyes open as subtly
as the tendrils of darkness that crept into my mind—they
are your shadows, stretching their bony fingers across the years
toward me, as if somewhere, far beyond us both
is the sun
Phantoms and Relics
Sometimes when I go to bed
it feels like I am walking into battle;
I know what waits for me, there in the gathering
dark, I feel the eyes, patient and ready. Throughout the day
the Fears come, the Hurts cluster, the Memories are triggered
and they all settle into the dusty corners of my room, pushed aside
by the light, they inch closer when silence falls, given form
by the ethereal glow of the stars, they come ready
for their chance to sing
Bionote
FRANCES KOZIAR has publications in 10+ literary magazines, and is seeking an agent for a diverse NA/YA fantasy novel. Her poetry has appeared in the Voice of Eve, Breath and Shadow, and an anthology by the Poetry Institute of Canada. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Author website: https://franceskoziar.wixsite.com/author
I dreamed that my painting was about to fall
and I woke with a gasp, but when I dream
of being your prisoner again—back in that house—or of
the nameless murderers who hunt me when you
grow bored I wake silently, slipping my eyes open as subtly
as the tendrils of darkness that crept into my mind—they
are your shadows, stretching their bony fingers across the years
toward me, as if somewhere, far beyond us both
is the sun
Phantoms and Relics
Sometimes when I go to bed
it feels like I am walking into battle;
I know what waits for me, there in the gathering
dark, I feel the eyes, patient and ready. Throughout the day
the Fears come, the Hurts cluster, the Memories are triggered
and they all settle into the dusty corners of my room, pushed aside
by the light, they inch closer when silence falls, given form
by the ethereal glow of the stars, they come ready
for their chance to sing
Bionote
FRANCES KOZIAR has publications in 10+ literary magazines, and is seeking an agent for a diverse NA/YA fantasy novel. Her poetry has appeared in the Voice of Eve, Breath and Shadow, and an anthology by the Poetry Institute of Canada. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Author website: https://franceskoziar.wixsite.com/author
5 Poems by ayaz daryl nielsen
—
Lichen on dreams
blanketed
by weathered
foundations
Yet, still, and so,
the comfort
of closeness
within these,
our hours,
together
—
the ripe plumpness
of existence
perpetual motion
with
or without
us
—
places like this,
elsewhere,
out of place,
cast us out and
call us home
without our
knowing it
intimacy made mystical,
endless reserves
of storytelling
entwined with
bitter-sweet
associations…
sooner and later,
anything happens
—
Poem of Hearts
Two who meet and touch,
melt and endow, taking
their worlds in hand
Forgetting and forgiving
while embellishing
their own poem
with the salt-
sweetness
of love.
—
mailbox dharma emptiness
Lichen on dreams
blanketed
by weathered
foundations
Yet, still, and so,
the comfort
of closeness
within these,
our hours,
together
—
the ripe plumpness
of existence
perpetual motion
with
or without
us
—
places like this,
elsewhere,
out of place,
cast us out and
call us home
without our
knowing it
intimacy made mystical,
endless reserves
of storytelling
entwined with
bitter-sweet
associations…
sooner and later,
anything happens
—
Poem of Hearts
Two who meet and touch,
melt and endow, taking
their worlds in hand
Forgetting and forgiving
while embellishing
their own poem
with the salt-
sweetness
of love.
—
mailbox dharma emptiness
Bionote
ayaz daryl nielsen, veteran and former hospice nurse, lives in Longmont, Colorado, USA. Editor of bear creek haiku (30+ years/145+ issues) with poetry published worldwide (and deeply appreciated), he is online at: bear creek haiku poetry, poems and info
5 Poems by G. F. Boyer
A Toast to My Body
Here’s to this old suit of clothes,
sodden booze sponge, heavy house
of ill repute. Three cheers
for this aging carcass hung with meat:
fat giblets and muscle ropes,
spacious brainpan and addled homunculus.
Bravo for the bony framework, blood network,
relentless busywork of organs and cells:
the pump engine, the corpuscle abacus—
that sensible valentine of muscle and gristle.
Let’s hear it for the commodious belly,
its endless appetites and mindless devouring,
the dumb and driven animal of me.
Caution
One can falter
descending the stairs—
nude or otherwise.
One can be awk-
ward, be conquered,
despair.
One can fall. One can
risk it all, then
regain
balustrades of balance,
palisades of pain.
One can hear
thoughts arise
from the base of the mind.
One can malign
or praise.
Living Color
Because you have more rods or cones than I,
somewhere over a stranger rainbow, might
a teal and cyan skunk waddle across a maroon lawn,
while your eerie cerise eyes are closed in sleep?
Worse, in some future universe, will my new be old
to you, and my white-hot your bone-cold?
My Last Failure
At Forest Park, a nurse
brings meds in pudding,
wields a pressure cuff
amid the blather of TVs.
Now that Mom doesn’t know
me, I think she might love me.
I don’t forget the set of her mouth
when I displeased her—
her eyes’ gray flash.
I remember her poised
to strike at my first failure.
Like the scraped plates
of poverty, I am empty.
Like a scorpion, I am barbed.
Nursing
Mom thinks I’m her sister.
Of course I am. These days,
I’ll be anyone she needs.
Her lunch tray's abandoned—
bread drying to shells,
yellowed mashed potatoes.
Let us sit and read
Good Housekeeping, or watch
The Waltons on TV, while
she spoons vanilla pudding
into her hairbrush, intent
as if she were diapering a baby.
Bionote
G. F. Boyer earned an MFA from the University of Washington. She is a retired teacher and editor of poetry and fiction. Her 2018 book, Missile Hymnal Amulet, is available from Amazon via FutureCycle Press:
https://www.amazon.com/Missile-Hymnal-Amulet-G-Boyer/dp/1942371632/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=futurecycle+press&qid=1538508945&s=Books&sr=1-5&ref=sr_1_5&linkCode=sl1&tag=futur07a-20&linkId=b203a36d3b5f3a909a8a7e044b1f368b&language=en_US
Here’s to this old suit of clothes,
sodden booze sponge, heavy house
of ill repute. Three cheers
for this aging carcass hung with meat:
fat giblets and muscle ropes,
spacious brainpan and addled homunculus.
Bravo for the bony framework, blood network,
relentless busywork of organs and cells:
the pump engine, the corpuscle abacus—
that sensible valentine of muscle and gristle.
Let’s hear it for the commodious belly,
its endless appetites and mindless devouring,
the dumb and driven animal of me.
Caution
One can falter
descending the stairs—
nude or otherwise.
One can be awk-
ward, be conquered,
despair.
One can fall. One can
risk it all, then
regain
balustrades of balance,
palisades of pain.
One can hear
thoughts arise
from the base of the mind.
One can malign
or praise.
Living Color
Because you have more rods or cones than I,
somewhere over a stranger rainbow, might
a teal and cyan skunk waddle across a maroon lawn,
while your eerie cerise eyes are closed in sleep?
Worse, in some future universe, will my new be old
to you, and my white-hot your bone-cold?
My Last Failure
At Forest Park, a nurse
brings meds in pudding,
wields a pressure cuff
amid the blather of TVs.
Now that Mom doesn’t know
me, I think she might love me.
I don’t forget the set of her mouth
when I displeased her—
her eyes’ gray flash.
I remember her poised
to strike at my first failure.
Like the scraped plates
of poverty, I am empty.
Like a scorpion, I am barbed.
Nursing
Mom thinks I’m her sister.
Of course I am. These days,
I’ll be anyone she needs.
Her lunch tray's abandoned—
bread drying to shells,
yellowed mashed potatoes.
Let us sit and read
Good Housekeeping, or watch
The Waltons on TV, while
she spoons vanilla pudding
into her hairbrush, intent
as if she were diapering a baby.
Bionote
G. F. Boyer earned an MFA from the University of Washington. She is a retired teacher and editor of poetry and fiction. Her 2018 book, Missile Hymnal Amulet, is available from Amazon via FutureCycle Press:
https://www.amazon.com/Missile-Hymnal-Amulet-G-Boyer/dp/1942371632/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=futurecycle+press&qid=1538508945&s=Books&sr=1-5&ref=sr_1_5&linkCode=sl1&tag=futur07a-20&linkId=b203a36d3b5f3a909a8a7e044b1f368b&language=en_US
3 Poems by Patricia Robertson
FOX SAYS
nothing. Knows better. Watches the dog and me,
licking her paws.
Keeps her own counsel. Lives inside snow, inside forest,
inside darkening sky.
Pities us, tied together like captives. That lighted cage
from which we emerged
blinds the stars. What do we navigate by? Baffled,
we must stumble and grope.
Listen, fox says with her taut body. Smell. Notice
silence and not-silence. Quiver and leaf.
Somewhere inside you a warm furred body
is waiting to get out.
ACCOUNTING
That each word can be sold. Each fox. Each blade of grass
as soon as a price is decided on.
Is a fox worth more than a word? It depends
on whether it’s the last fox.
The longest words are the cheapest.
Stone tastes better in the mouth than infinity.
Our shrewd neighbour bought all the words for blue.
Since then the sky has changed colour.
Open the gridded air with the can opener.
Lift out each heart.
What we didn’t notice has vanished.
The shape of a baby’s earlobe. Snow at sunset.
POEM ON AN IMAGINARY PAINTING
In the corner a star
from which the painting unravels:
the woman who sits on a blue chair,
the man who kneels at the foot of a ladder,
the dog at a window, gazing out.
Released from the brush, they must have something to tell us,
having come all that way.
Bionote
Patricia Robertson’s third short fiction collection, Hour of the Crab, is forthcoming from Goose Lane in 2020. She won the international Aesthetica Creative Writing Award for Poetry in 2018.
nothing. Knows better. Watches the dog and me,
licking her paws.
Keeps her own counsel. Lives inside snow, inside forest,
inside darkening sky.
Pities us, tied together like captives. That lighted cage
from which we emerged
blinds the stars. What do we navigate by? Baffled,
we must stumble and grope.
Listen, fox says with her taut body. Smell. Notice
silence and not-silence. Quiver and leaf.
Somewhere inside you a warm furred body
is waiting to get out.
ACCOUNTING
That each word can be sold. Each fox. Each blade of grass
as soon as a price is decided on.
Is a fox worth more than a word? It depends
on whether it’s the last fox.
The longest words are the cheapest.
Stone tastes better in the mouth than infinity.
Our shrewd neighbour bought all the words for blue.
Since then the sky has changed colour.
Open the gridded air with the can opener.
Lift out each heart.
What we didn’t notice has vanished.
The shape of a baby’s earlobe. Snow at sunset.
POEM ON AN IMAGINARY PAINTING
In the corner a star
from which the painting unravels:
the woman who sits on a blue chair,
the man who kneels at the foot of a ladder,
the dog at a window, gazing out.
Released from the brush, they must have something to tell us,
having come all that way.
Bionote
Patricia Robertson’s third short fiction collection, Hour of the Crab, is forthcoming from Goose Lane in 2020. She won the international Aesthetica Creative Writing Award for Poetry in 2018.
2 Poems by Amelia Walker
A recipe for teardrops
As a child, I wanted
a recipe for teardrops
because I liked their taste
and how they could wash so much
away
As I grew, I discovered
the recipe lurked in countless places
and had many variations,
each with its own unique tang.
I swallowed so many
they made me sick
like cheap liquor, and yet
in moments I still thirst
for their salt,
the sweetness they throw
in relief
Game
Why is it, the older I grow,
the less certain I feel
of all that I am meant, by now,
to be, and know?
Only one certain thing:
when you touch my arm
like that, and smile, I hope
we are both playing the same game
by the same rules, and even
if it is all make believe, let's stay
beneath these sheets a little longer,
keep dreaming, keep believing
in these shadow shapes
of shifting limbs
and creasing skins
Bionote:
Amelia Walker is a South Australian writer. She has published four poetry collections, most recently Dreamday, and currently lectures at the University of South Australia.
As a child, I wanted
a recipe for teardrops
because I liked their taste
and how they could wash so much
away
As I grew, I discovered
the recipe lurked in countless places
and had many variations,
each with its own unique tang.
I swallowed so many
they made me sick
like cheap liquor, and yet
in moments I still thirst
for their salt,
the sweetness they throw
in relief
Game
Why is it, the older I grow,
the less certain I feel
of all that I am meant, by now,
to be, and know?
Only one certain thing:
when you touch my arm
like that, and smile, I hope
we are both playing the same game
by the same rules, and even
if it is all make believe, let's stay
beneath these sheets a little longer,
keep dreaming, keep believing
in these shadow shapes
of shifting limbs
and creasing skins
Bionote:
Amelia Walker is a South Australian writer. She has published four poetry collections, most recently Dreamday, and currently lectures at the University of South Australia.
5 Poems by Catfish McDaris
Degas
Eight years after it reported stolen an
impressionist painting by Edgar Degas
was found by French customs officers
It was discovered inside a suitcase in
Marne-la-Vallee on a bus, none of the
passengers claimed it, the painting
Depicts a scene from Mozart’s opera,
Don Giovanni, called Les Choristes,
The Chorus Singers, it was shadowed
With grays, yellows, ochres, red caps
a man with an upraised sword, dancing
beautiful ladies, Paris’ Musee d’Orsay
were delighted to recover the masterpiece.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Honeymoon
The virgin
canvas lies
beneath me
in blinding
white ready
for love
It sighs
in anticipation
trembling
awaiting
my thrust
Our Mona
Lisa soon
to be
exposed
for the
curious.
The Secret to Life is Keep Sucking Air Until You Can’t
I’ve been playing the piano hard
It’s bleeding all over the floor
There are cracks in the ceiling
All the clocks in the galaxy have stopped
Your love is a giant termite
Turning my wooden leg into sawdust
Bring me a hummingbird, pretty mama
We’ll ditch all your granny panties.
The Fizz Is a Fading Bruise
I’m confiscating your
love tonight, we’ll feel
no sorrows for the to-
morrows, they may never
arrive dead or alive and
we’ll saddle our palominos
and disappear into the co-
balt lapis lazuli sunset.
Paris
Painted hyacinth and saffron with
brushstrokes of scarlet sulfur
peacocks in a raspberry sky,
green sleeping ducks by the
cattail forest and melodic stream
Rainbow cutthroat trout leaping
for the gnat hatch, fat frogs burping,
loons and cranes on stilts hunting
Vincent thought about the dancer
at the Crazy Horse and how she’d
asked him to steal a Van Gogh,
he painted her one instead.
Bionote
Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He’s been active in the small press world for 25 years. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, Italian, and Esperanto.
Eight years after it reported stolen an
impressionist painting by Edgar Degas
was found by French customs officers
It was discovered inside a suitcase in
Marne-la-Vallee on a bus, none of the
passengers claimed it, the painting
Depicts a scene from Mozart’s opera,
Don Giovanni, called Les Choristes,
The Chorus Singers, it was shadowed
With grays, yellows, ochres, red caps
a man with an upraised sword, dancing
beautiful ladies, Paris’ Musee d’Orsay
were delighted to recover the masterpiece.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Honeymoon
The virgin
canvas lies
beneath me
in blinding
white ready
for love
It sighs
in anticipation
trembling
awaiting
my thrust
Our Mona
Lisa soon
to be
exposed
for the
curious.
The Secret to Life is Keep Sucking Air Until You Can’t
I’ve been playing the piano hard
It’s bleeding all over the floor
There are cracks in the ceiling
All the clocks in the galaxy have stopped
Your love is a giant termite
Turning my wooden leg into sawdust
Bring me a hummingbird, pretty mama
We’ll ditch all your granny panties.
The Fizz Is a Fading Bruise
I’m confiscating your
love tonight, we’ll feel
no sorrows for the to-
morrows, they may never
arrive dead or alive and
we’ll saddle our palominos
and disappear into the co-
balt lapis lazuli sunset.
Paris
Painted hyacinth and saffron with
brushstrokes of scarlet sulfur
peacocks in a raspberry sky,
green sleeping ducks by the
cattail forest and melodic stream
Rainbow cutthroat trout leaping
for the gnat hatch, fat frogs burping,
loons and cranes on stilts hunting
Vincent thought about the dancer
at the Crazy Horse and how she’d
asked him to steal a Van Gogh,
he painted her one instead.
Bionote
Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He’s been active in the small press world for 25 years. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, Italian, and Esperanto.
2 Poems by Kevin Cowdall
The Spectral Wolf
Like a spectre in the shadows,
it glides between the trees
on rapid padded paws;
breath curling like a strand
of early morning mist
on the freezing winter air.
The forest holds its breath.
It has roamed far from its lair,
driven on by growing hunger,
straying ever further afield and
foraging longer in search of prey.
Now it halts to scent the breeze,
raises its head, and rends a howl.
The forest holds its breath.
The Skittish Seahorse (Tanka)
It is the oddest
of Nature’s menagerie;
a nervous chess-piece
riding the currents of its
Natural Inclinations.
Bionote
Kevin Cowdall was born in Liverpool, England. He has had over 200 poems published in magazines, journals and anthologies in the UK and across Europe, Australia, India, Canada, and the USA, and broadcast on BBC Radio. He has previously released three collections; ‘The Reflective Image’, ‘Monochrome Leaves’ and ‘A Walk in the Park’. His 2016 retrospective collection, ‘Assorted Bric-a-brac’ (bringing together the best from these collections with a selection of more recent poems), has had excellent reviews and is available in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon. Kevin’s novella, ‘Paper Gods and Iron Men’, is also available in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon.
Like a spectre in the shadows,
it glides between the trees
on rapid padded paws;
breath curling like a strand
of early morning mist
on the freezing winter air.
The forest holds its breath.
It has roamed far from its lair,
driven on by growing hunger,
straying ever further afield and
foraging longer in search of prey.
Now it halts to scent the breeze,
raises its head, and rends a howl.
The forest holds its breath.
The Skittish Seahorse (Tanka)
It is the oddest
of Nature’s menagerie;
a nervous chess-piece
riding the currents of its
Natural Inclinations.
Bionote
Kevin Cowdall was born in Liverpool, England. He has had over 200 poems published in magazines, journals and anthologies in the UK and across Europe, Australia, India, Canada, and the USA, and broadcast on BBC Radio. He has previously released three collections; ‘The Reflective Image’, ‘Monochrome Leaves’ and ‘A Walk in the Park’. His 2016 retrospective collection, ‘Assorted Bric-a-brac’ (bringing together the best from these collections with a selection of more recent poems), has had excellent reviews and is available in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon. Kevin’s novella, ‘Paper Gods and Iron Men’, is also available in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon.
1 Poem by Wendy Gist
Sweetness
Radiant pomegranate
busted open on a limb:
A dove ducks in,
plucks a pip, in sun’s ray--
Beak bleeds
the hot gem:
Divinely humid.
Not a sound of what is to come.
Bionote
Wendy Gist’s poetry, fiction and essays have been featured or are forthcoming in Amsterdam Quarterly, Empty Mirror Arts and Literary Magazine, Foliate Oak, Fourth River, Grey Sparrow Journal, New Plains Review, Rio Grande Review, RipRap, Soundings Review, St. Austin Review, The Lake (UK), and many other fine journals. Gist co-edits Red Savina Review. She’s the author of the chapbook “Moods of the Dream Fog” from Finishing Line Press. Gist is a Pushcart Prize nominee and semifinalist for Best Small Fictions 2017. She Co-Edits Red Savina Review Journal.
Radiant pomegranate
busted open on a limb:
A dove ducks in,
plucks a pip, in sun’s ray--
Beak bleeds
the hot gem:
Divinely humid.
Not a sound of what is to come.
Bionote
Wendy Gist’s poetry, fiction and essays have been featured or are forthcoming in Amsterdam Quarterly, Empty Mirror Arts and Literary Magazine, Foliate Oak, Fourth River, Grey Sparrow Journal, New Plains Review, Rio Grande Review, RipRap, Soundings Review, St. Austin Review, The Lake (UK), and many other fine journals. Gist co-edits Red Savina Review. She’s the author of the chapbook “Moods of the Dream Fog” from Finishing Line Press. Gist is a Pushcart Prize nominee and semifinalist for Best Small Fictions 2017. She Co-Edits Red Savina Review Journal.
1 Poem by Alan Britt
BANANA REPUBLIC
Flax seed, one worthy of Jupiter’s
carpenter blue light.
Nickel coin, hole drilled thru copper skull.
Dehydrated verbs & adjectives like
onions dying to be caramelized.
Groundhog bloodies its teeth
against 14 gauge galvanized steel,
blueberry blue, positive there
is no afterlife.
Nonprofit, the latest ruse, Fidel posing
as cottonmouth along the Intracoastal,
Ft. Myers, nestled between the overthrow
of Guatemala circa Eisenhower & circa
who gives a flying fuck, circa who gives
one, anyway?
Bionote
Preferring to "lean and loafe at his ease," Alan Britt is troubled by the corruption and ambivalence that permeates the Great Experiment, so politically speaking he has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds, and oil, also that it’s time to eliminate corporate entitlements and reduce military spending in order to properly educate its citizenry, thereby reducing crime and strengthening the populace in the manner that the Constitution envisioned. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars he now teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
Flax seed, one worthy of Jupiter’s
carpenter blue light.
Nickel coin, hole drilled thru copper skull.
Dehydrated verbs & adjectives like
onions dying to be caramelized.
Groundhog bloodies its teeth
against 14 gauge galvanized steel,
blueberry blue, positive there
is no afterlife.
Nonprofit, the latest ruse, Fidel posing
as cottonmouth along the Intracoastal,
Ft. Myers, nestled between the overthrow
of Guatemala circa Eisenhower & circa
who gives a flying fuck, circa who gives
one, anyway?
Bionote
Preferring to "lean and loafe at his ease," Alan Britt is troubled by the corruption and ambivalence that permeates the Great Experiment, so politically speaking he has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds, and oil, also that it’s time to eliminate corporate entitlements and reduce military spending in order to properly educate its citizenry, thereby reducing crime and strengthening the populace in the manner that the Constitution envisioned. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars he now teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
1 Poem by g emil reutter
Of Consequence
And so it is
we find ourselves
in this place
unexpected.
Controlled tic of the clock
unwavering in its pursuit
of the next minute, hour
day, month, year.
Yet, in this era
of speed of communication
we slow it down
each tic of the clock
of consequence
Savour each drop of rain
every fallen leaf
each blush of flower
every bird stopover
Relish each touch of hand
every brush of flesh of lip
each word exchanged
every unruffled second
Bionote
g emil reutter is a writer of poems and stories. Nine collections of his poetry and fiction have been published. A Matter of Time is forthcoming in 2019 from Concrete Meat Press. He is the Book Review Editor at North of Oxford. https://gereutter.wordpress.com/about/
And so it is
we find ourselves
in this place
unexpected.
Controlled tic of the clock
unwavering in its pursuit
of the next minute, hour
day, month, year.
Yet, in this era
of speed of communication
we slow it down
each tic of the clock
of consequence
Savour each drop of rain
every fallen leaf
each blush of flower
every bird stopover
Relish each touch of hand
every brush of flesh of lip
each word exchanged
every unruffled second
Bionote
g emil reutter is a writer of poems and stories. Nine collections of his poetry and fiction have been published. A Matter of Time is forthcoming in 2019 from Concrete Meat Press. He is the Book Review Editor at North of Oxford. https://gereutter.wordpress.com/about/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)